Following the policeman’s instruction, I slowly pull the truck around until we’re once more facing north. Though I trust that Mike knows what he’s doing, it still takes everything in me not to ram my truck through the barricade and continue on my merry way.
We set off back up the highway, not a one of us speaking until the officer and the line of police cars has disappeared back into the shimmering world of water behind us. Only then does Mike place a hand on mine.
“Alright, Kyle, pull over here,” he says, pointing to the shoulder. The other side of the highway is thicker than ever with traffic.
“Okay, so,” my friends continues once I’ve done as he’s instructed. We’re at the top of an overpass, the neon sign of a gas station flickering at eye level to our left. From a backpack at his feet, Mike extracts a map that he spreads over his lap.
“What do we do?” I ask as I lean over to look. Try as I might, I can’t keep my voice from wavering. Noticing, Aaron reaches over the back of the seat and gives my shoulder a squeeze.
“We keep going,” Mike says simply, his finger tracing a line down the center of the map. He has his phone out and the flashlight on and is bent over the thin paper, eyebrows knitted.
“How?”
“The backroads!” Tim pipes up from behind Mike as if he’s just solved a riddle.
“Exactly,” Mike confirms. “Ah-ha! Here!” Folding back the edges of the map, Mike holds it up, his finger tapping the paper triumphantly. “We should be able to follow these county access roads down into Houston. See? Look.” His finger runs a line down the map to the left of the highway we’re currently on.
“Think they’ll be open?”
Mike shrugs. “They might be. Even if they aren’t, I doubt they’ll have a police barricade. Likely no one will be on them because they’ll all be underwater by now.”
“Will we be able to make it?”
“Maybe. But we have to try, don’t we?”
His resolve is too much. When next I speak, my voice quivers not because of my worry for Shannon but because I’ve got the best damn friends a man could have.
“You guys don’t have to—” I start, only to be drowned out as all three men begin protesting loudly at once.
“Oh, shut up, Kyle,” Mike says with a dismissive wave of his hand when everyone has quieted down. He goes back to scrutinizing the map, his eyes flashing between his lap and the barely visible countryside off to our left. “Alright, the entrance should be just a mile or so ahead. Let’s get going.”
Following Mike’s instructions, I port back up the highway, the water so deep when I come down off the overpass that I can no longer drive fifty but have to keep it at an infuriating fifteen. With every gust of wind my tires slip, my truck shifting from one side of the highway to the other as the boat slides too. Some gusts are so powerful that more than once we all let out a collective gasp as we’re nearly pushed right off the highway.
Mercifully, our turnoff is not too far up the road, just as Mike promised. About five minutes after we set off with new plan in mind and new hope in heart, we come to an exit with a large, flashing sign warning us of deeper waters ahead. Beyond this sign is a darkness more complete than any I've ever seen. It’s as if time itself has been drawn back to before fire's discovery.
I ease us off the highway and onto the feeder; this we follow along for a half a mile. We’re back to heading southbound, though much slower than before since the water is halfway up my tires. Another foot and it will be in the cab itself.
To make things worse, the feeder soon transforms from a two-way asphalt road into a gravel lane. A mile after this, the gravel ends and we hit mud.
Another quarter of a mile up the road, we reach the end of the open section of the feeder, a red-and-white-paneled barrier blocking the way forward. I pull to a stop right up against it, grill to plank. To my left runs the highway, the northbound side now at a complete standstill, the southbound side undoubtedly frustratingly empty to those stuck on its brother. Further up the road, I can see the flashing lights of the original police barricade where we’d been forced to turn around.
“Okay,” Mike says. “Looks like the access road starts just on the other side of this barrier. It takes a hard right and then turns southward again after a mile or so.”
“So how do we get around this barrier?” asks Tim.
No one says a word, though I know we’re all thinking the same thing. A minute of defiant silence passes before Aaron sighs and unbuckles his seatbelt.
“Fine,” he says with an exaggerated groan. “I’ll do it. But Tim’s coming with me.”
Donning their raincoats, my two coworkers-turned-friends open their respective doors and climb out into the driving rain. Turning back, Aaron shouts something, a boyish grin upon his face, but the roar of the storm is too loud and I can’t make out what he’s says. I flash him a thumbs up. He flashes one back and sets off after Tim, who has already waded to the barrier.
As Mike and I sit silently, Aaron and Tim huddle to talk over their approach. Decided, they make their ways to either side of the barrier. The water is knee-deep and several times each man nearly loses his footing.
Taking hold of the bottommost slat of the barrier, the two men nod to three and straighten their legs, their faces twisting with the effort. Yet no matter how they strain, and strain mightily they do, the thing won’t budge. They attempt three more times before re-huddling to discuss their options. Then, while Tim stays near the barrier, Aaron wades back to my window.
“It must be bolted down!” he shouts through the crack. “Do you have anything we can use to knock it down?”
“Check the back!” I shout in return. “There should be a ten-pound sledge in the toolbox!”
Sure enough, there is. Hammer in hand, Aaron wades back to Tim. Following Tim’s direction, he begins knocking out the slats systematically. They’re a good team; in less than twenty well-placed swings, the barrier is dismantled and I pull my truck through no problem.
“Whew!” Aaron exclaims as he jumps into the backseat. Tim climbs in after him, a river of runoff too. “We were lucky. Whoever made that thing did one hell of a poor job.”
“Thanks, guys,” I say. “Really. I know what you’re going to say, but I really do feel like after all of this is said and done, I’m going to owe each and every one of you my life.”
“Nah,” Tim drawls. “Just promise you’ll help us rescue our damsels in distress one day.”
“Assuming you find one,” Aaron says. “It’s going to be hard with a face like that, you ugly mother—“
“Alright,” Mike interjects, his eyes narrowing as he searches the black world beyond the headlights for the way ahead. “It looks like the road turns right up there, right where that reflective yellow post is.”
I ease us forward, most of my focus on the tires and how they feel on the road. I can feel the mud sucking at them, working to pull them down.
We make the turn, and from here it’s a relatively straight shot away from the highway and into the darkness of the countryside, the lights of the stalled cars soon swallowed by the rain.
I have my lights as bright as they can go, their beams casting an eerie glow across the surface of the flood. With the water nearly up to my bumper, it looks like we’re driving atop a wave-less sea, though there’s a good bit of debris to contend with—tree branches and house siding and other refuse of nature and society. More than once I have no choice but to run over the object in question or risk going off the road.